Sunset Reflections
Today was laundry day, so this morning Anne and I trooped all of the dirty clothes and linens into town to the laundromat. At home, with our basement washer and dryer combo, laundry is a daily non-event, but up here, up north, laundry day can be quite the thing. I was actually looking forward to this chore.
We trooped into the Soo, taking Portage along the way, because that is the most target rich environment in-town for out-of-state license plates. Last night, while returning to the cabin from the Palace Saloon, Anne spied three new states along the locks that she didn’t already have in her current iteration of the license plate game. Today though, she drew a blank and got nothing, nada. This game always begins in a rush, but its endgame is always so-so-so drawn out.
Doing laundry at the laundromat is as boring as watching paint dry, but the accoutrements around laundry that have built-up over time make the process more interesting. First, I got a coffee from Penny’s Kitchen, then Anne went shopping for a pair of pants for Bubs at Barish Brothers, founded in 1913 and about the only retailer of note, still in existence downtown. Around the corner from Barish, back on Portage, is another venerable store, ‘Das Gift Haus’. This is one of the many establishments along tourist row that caters to out-of-town license plates. Interestingly, if you plug ‘Das Gift Haus’ into Google translate, you get ‘The Poison House’. “My dear, that is such a lovely decorative vase that you are holding, would you like some arsenic with it?” Thank you, Charles!
After laundry, we did Penny’s for lunch. Then, because Anne’s phone has been losing charge so rapidly of late, we went in search of a cellphone repair store. After checking at several other places around town, we finally found a place that looked like it could possibly help replace the battery in her phone. It was a cellphone store that was also a liquor store. The perfect combination for drunk dialing! The guy manning the phone desk had a lap full of broken iPhones and seemed way more inclined in talking Anne out of her repair than doing the job. We thanked him and left him and headed to Meijer’s for groceries. The storm hit while we in there, but we had our umbrellas and Meijer’s had its generator. We made it back to the cabin in time for Thursday fish. I had the perch.
